Authors Beware . . . Amazon is outta control!

Some craziness is happening at Amazon.


1. Like many publishers have, TWCP signed up for the "Search Inside" program at amazon.com for Flashpoint. It is a cool program where customers can actually see some of the contents of a book: copyright page, selected pages inside the book, foreword, about the author, etc.

Starting a couple of weeks ago, the "Search Inside" was gone. A day later, it was back . . . only to disappear and return seemingly at will.

My publisher made some inquiries and was told that Amazon is testing the Search Inside function and will continue to do so for a couple more weeks. During the testing, some titles will revert to Look Inside and others will have neither. All is supposed to return to normal when the tests are finished.

2. Another feature of Amazon listings is the ability for people to "tag" one's product. A tag is a descriptor that can be searched. A friend pointed out to me that her book was tagged with some bizarre descriptors. A little more searching for other friends books showed the same. Tags like:

bad erotica . . . boycott . . . bad fiction . . . big thing . . . bad theology . . . porn . . . propaganda!

Puzzling and just a little irritating. You can check to see who tagged your product, but rarely does the profile of the person reveal anything other than they have a dislike of Christian fiction.

What can an author do about it? Not much, but typically, less than 12 tags are shown on the first page. Go in and add some more relevant tags and then you can push the hurtful tags off that front product page.

3. Something that did happen to me: When checking out the Flashpoint listing I saw that the price was almost $5 higher than the retail price. I did some searching and found it was a surcharge called a Sourcing Fee. This fee is calculated before shipping and taxes.

I called Amazon (which is a lesson in patience itself) and was told that a sourcing fee is attached to a book when it is out of print or otherwise difficult to locate! But, but, but . . . I said. I called my publisher who contacted the distributor who then talked to someone at Amazon. Meanwhile, I wrote to customer service and this is the response I received:

"While we do charge a sourcing fee for some special order items, that fee is almost always under $5.00.Our surcharges or sourcing fees reflect the handling costs for stocking, assembling, and packaging each order. Some items may incur a surcharge or sourcing fee to cover the expense of selling these items; we regret that we must occasionally pass these costs along to our customers."

The distributor was successful and the sourcing fee was removed. Good end to the story, but I wonder how many people were put off from ordering a copy of the novel during those five days?

It seems that Amazon is constantly trying out new ways of serving their customers and perhaps new ways of making additional money! whatever the reason, keep an eye on your book listings at Amazon. Contact them through customer service to see if you can get any satisfaction. If that doesn't work, call your publisher.